


The Mistake

by Lady_Lola



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Brief mentions of torture, But they come back, Character Death, Depressed Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Emotions, Exile, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, brief mentions of experiments and medical esaminations, it's The Old Guard folks, obviously somenone dies, set immediately after the movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:42:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27191224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Lola/pseuds/Lady_Lola
Summary: The aftermath of Booker's betrayal and his consequent exile.Joe and Nicky face their feelings towards Booker and what he did.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 18
Kudos: 56





	The Mistake

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!   
> This is my first "The Old Guard" story, I hope you will enjoy it.  
> Joe and Nicky are my favourite characters, but my lonely heart is crying a river for poor, desperate, drunk Booker and, although I don't condone his actions, I hope they will forgive him soon.  
> Please keep in mind that English is not my first language (I'm Italian just like Nicky/Luca, despite not from Genoa), so if you find some mistakes/inconsistencies, please point them out in the comments and I will try to correct them asap!  
> Moreover, I admit I know very little about Napoleon's campaign in Russia, I based my story on the Wiki page about it and I hope it is plausible.  
> Let me know what you think of it, bye :)

The ride from the pub to the second, more secret hideout they had somewhere in the outskirts of London had been a silent one.

They had just dropped Booker off on the riverbank, condemning him to a century of solitude and exile away from the family he had so severely and desperately betrayed.

His own grief and desperation could only get him so far in winning the sympathy of the three other immortals back.

Andy and Nile had been the only two people of the team to greet him, for very different reasons; for Andy, it was a matter of opportunity: it would have been almost impossible to see her again after his exile, despite her telling him to have faith.

As for Nile, she was the last admission to the team and his betrayal, although still grave, was not as unforgivable to her as it was to the others.

Nick and Joe, however… Nicky and Joe were a very different matter.

Burdened with the pain and the memories of the days of torture spent in Merrick’s hands, and also aggravated by the news of Andy’s newfound mortality and the awareness that their years with her were going to end way sooner that they wanted, they had just stood on the stairs next to the pub, watching him with a mixture of sadness and regret in their eyes, before turning their backs to him and slowly walking away.

As soon as they had arrived to the safe-house, they had split.

Nile had basically followed Andy in the bedroom, making sure she ate her food, drank plenty of water and not just vodka, took her drugs and went to sleep.

Joe and Nicky had done pretty much the same, spending some minutes praying for good measure, and then retreated to bed, lying on their side and spooning.

Sleep however, despite the fatigue they both felt, had not come so easily.

“It will not last a century” Nicky murmured, his words soft and demure.

“Sorry, what?” Joe replied with a sleepy voice.

“I said, it won’t last a century. Booker’s exile, I mean” Nicky repeated. “I will forgive him soon, and you know Andy and Nile are already half-there. I know you don’t understand it…”

“Of course I don’t!” Joe exclaimed loudly, sitting up in the bed and making Nicky turn to him to watch his face as he spoke, just to be immediately shushed by his lover.

“Not so loud, my love, not so loud. Andy needs her sleep now that she’s mortal”.

“That’s it! That’s what I’m talking about! You say stuff like _Andy needs sleep, she’s hurt, protect Andy!,_ and then expect me to forgive the one person responsible for her injuries!” Joe ejaculated, frustrated and angry. “It doesn’t make sense to me, Niccolò… Booker betrayed us, sold us to a man who wanted to exploit our gift to make money; I spent days watching the doctors stab you, probe you, dig out pieces of your organs and bones and tissues and...” he stopped speaking as a sob wrecked his body, and he started crying silently.

“Oh Yusuf” Nicky murmured, pushing up from the bed and cradling Joe gently in hi arms; “my moon and sun, don’t cry, it’s over. We are safe, we are together, no one will hurt us here. Let it go, just let it go”.

The young soldier placed his hand behind his love’s head, pushing him against his shoulder and letting him wet his t-shirt and his neck with tears that spoke not only of sadness and pain, but also of confusion and uncertainty.

After the quiet sobbing subsided, Joe disentangled from Nicky’s embrace, quickly dabbed the tears away from his cheeks, and let himself go soft and pliant as Nicky held his face in his warm, gentle hands and kissed him lovingly.

Joe had always wondered (sometimes with a bit of envy) how Niccolò, the soldier, the crusader, the one of them more versed to carry heavy weapons and dedicate himself to physical work during the times in the past they still had to trade labour for food and accommodations, somehow ended up having the most delicate and elegant fingers he’d ever seen. That night, however, he was just so grateful that it had happened.

“How can you all forgive Booker? How can you ask me to forgive him”, Joe pleaded, “when all I wanted to do back at the laboratory and all I want to do now is finding him and trying over and over and over to grant him the death he so strongly desire?”.

Joe stared into Nicky’s eyes, even more liquid and shiny as silver for the tears he was trying to hold, and tried to read what the other half of his immortal heart was thinking.

However, nothing could have prepared him for the words Nicky spoke next.

“Because we made a mistake, Yusuf. We made a terrible mistake, and left Booker alone to deal with it” Nicky simply admitted, like it was a truth spoken from a higher power.

Joe was flabbergasted. He looked at Nicky like he had looked at the blade of his sword planted in his stomach the first time the crusader had killed him, a mixture of surprise and incredulity.

He had no idea what Nicky was talking about; they were a family, they had been a family for two hundred and more years, and no one of them had ever left Booker alone.

Sure, he knew that Sebastien was the one in the group who had had the most problems in adjusting to their peculiar condition, but he thought that after two centuries travelling either with them or with Andy, he had overpassed those issues and finally realized he could count on them.

“I… I’m sorry, hayati, but I don’t think I truly understand your words.

I cannot consider anything we did with Sebastien wrong, because we behaved exactly how Andromache and Quynh had done when they had found us” Joe admitted, defeated.

The sniper took his husband’s right hand in his left, latching their fingers together, and started caressing the back with his thumb.

“We did not, and you know it. We went to Russia, found him, took him with us… and then let him go”.

_The journey to Russia had not been an easy one._

_Luckily, they had already been in Gdansk at the time they all started dreaming about anguish, war, cold and death. They had moved there to help the people get back on their feet after the hard siege they had experienced by Napoleon’s army, and when the dreams had started appearing, it was clear that their new “brother” had been part of the French infantry._

_They had seen him walking tiredly behind wagons carrying cannons and heavy weaponry; seen him again running aimlessly in the night, half-freezing and stumbling every two or three steps, the sounds of the soldiers hunting him getting closer and closer; lastly, they had felt those soldiers’ hands grab him by the shoulders, drag him back to the camp, and then tie a noose around his neck and hang him in front of many of his former companions who had been laughing, shouting, calling him traitor and deserter._

_As soon as the rope had been pulled for the first time, all three had woken up suddenly._

_Nicolas, always the empath, had started coughing, encircling his neck with his hands, unable to speak; Andrea had started shooting descriptions at Youssef, who had quickly grabbed his notebook and started drawing every detail he could about the man and the landscape around him._

_In a few hours, the group had packed their miser possessions, sold everything they had been able to to buy food and a small carriage, and left to find their immortal companion._

_It had taken them days to get to the village just outside Moscow, and when they had found him half-hidden in a collapsed shed, he had already died multiple times hanged, starved, and frozen._

_When Sebastien had seen them carrying food and some sort of answers with them, he had wept with relief at the thought that he could be able to get back to his family and life in Paris._

_During the whole journey back to France, the group had tried many times to get him to understand that it would have been better for him to leave his old life behind and disappear with them, but every time he had plead, begged of them to let him live with his lovely wife, let him see his children grow, and every time he had sworn he would have been careful not to get his secret discovered._

_In the end, worn out and saddened by his pleas, they had agreed to let him go home, but they would have kept an eye on him and he would still work with them, seen his peculiar abilities as a forger._

_When his younger son had died, in pain and cursing him for not sharing his gift with others, they had welcomed him in the group, as no time had really passed._

“We were complete you and me, Yusuf, complete with each other and happy to be together no matter what, we could not even remember the families we had left behind, lost to us as soon as we had decided to n the Crusades and fight miles away from them for years… and Andy, well she was obviously still mourning Quynh, but you know her, she had been alone for millennia before meeting Quynh and Lykon, and she had always fared well alone…

Booker however had seen his family grow old and die, he had lived that pain over and over again, and then, despite the fact that he had joined us, he still was alone.

We shouldn’t have let him go home, shouldn’t have let him go through all this pain. We knew it would have happened, but still we believed him strong enough to bear alone the pain of the death of his entire family, and we were proven wrong” Nicky explained, sighing sadly when he saw that Joe still maintained a disbelieving expression on his beautiful face.

“I am not trying to undervalue the gravity of his actions, nor am I trying to force you to forget those desolate hours in dr. Kozark’s hands and the suffering we underwent and forgive Sebastien immediately, I am just stating how I feel about this whole ordeal, how I feel about not realizing that our closest friend, our brother had fallen in a pit of despair so deep he had come to think that the only way to be free of pain was to renounce our gift and die” Nicky declared, and Joe recognised the reflection of Booker’s desperation in his love’s soft voice, his measured words, his Italian accent that got thicker and more pronounced every time Nicky voiced his emotions.

He freed his hand, but before Nicky could be saddened by the gesture, Joe brought him into his arms and hugged him tight.

After they had spent what felt like hours (but it had probably been a matter of few minutes) basking in each other’s warmth and affection, the two men disentangled and locked their eyes.

“Niccolò… my loving, caring, forgiving Niccolò, the star that guides me when I am alone in the darkness and the sun that warms me when I am shivering in cold, how could I ever think that you were ruthless and cruel when I first met you? You are the kindest person I’ve ever encountered, and this world doesn’t deserve you” Joe told the person who had held his heart for nine centuries, as his lips curved into a smile full of love.

Nicky smiled back, and replied.

“You did not know me yet back then, and I had done so many monstrous actions to warrant your hate for all eternity. Meeting you changed me towards good and granted me forgiveness, the forgiveness that I had thought could only come from God”.

“And since you’ve found it, you want every sinner in the world to experience it, too” Joe added.

“Is it so naive on my part?” Nicky asked him, tilting his head slightly, but not stopping watching him.

“No, it is not”, Joe answered honestly, “but I am asking you to give me a little more time. I am not saying I will never forgive Booker, and it will probably happen for me too before the century is gone, but right now the pain is too fresh, the wound is still bleeding. Just… just give me time to get your screams out of my mind” Joe prayed.

“Of course, Yussuf, my love. We have all the time in the world, we will make good use of it” Nicky replied, and lied back on he bed bringing Joe to his side.

They finally fell asleep, together.

**Author's Note:**

> That's it, I hope you liked my fic.  
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
